Achievement, Chocolate and Other People's Misery

Imagine if you could constantly replicate the great feeling that you get from achieving something special. That overwhelming sense of self-satisfaction and self-esteem that comes when we have truly accomplished something we set out to do. Imagine if, as a manager, you could replicate that feeling in your staff as well.

The major physiological response to achievement is the increase in the levels of dopamine in our bodies. Dopamine is not only responsible for our feelings of satisfaction and well-being but, coincidentally, is also responsible for increased attention, problem-solving, cognition and translating motivation into action. It’s really a no-lose response that can get people feeling good, feeling engaged and performing at a higher level.

Here are some other things that increase the levels of dopamine in our system. They effectively give us the same ‘reward-response’ as achieving something great. One I don’t recommend, two I do recommend and one is completely your call:

1) Putting others down We actually feel better because someone else is worse, or worse off, than us. This is why we will never completely rid our teams of backstabbing. But when you witness this happening, it could mean that people have a decrease in status and control somewhere else that might be influencing this current behaviour.

2) Increase in status The above mechanism works, simply because an increase in status replicates the reward response. If someone is worse than us, we must be better than them. But status increases don’t need to be enormous to get the response. Things as simple as telling someone they’ve done a good job, or recognizing them in front of the group have exactly the same effect. There is a self-perceived increase in status and therefore the reward-response is activated

3) Learning Just learning something new or mastering a new task can also invoke the reward-response and give us heightened levels dopamine. Learning and mastery and understanding why something happens can equate to feelings of well-being and self-esteem and can produce the same physiological response as a financial bonus.

4) Chocolate Thank goodness! Another excuse! Chocolate is one of the foods that greatly increases endorphins and dopamine and helps us to feel good about ourselves and comfortable (for a while)